“I want to talk to you about something serious:
Will you come into the picture gallery?”

When at last they were close to a family group of
Georgian Caradocs, and could as it were shut out the
throng sufficiently for private speech, she began:

“Miltoun’s so horribly unhappy; I don’t
know what to do for him: He’s making himself
ill!”

And she suddenly looked up, in Courtier’s face.
She seemed to him very young, and touching, at that
moment. Her eyes had a gleam of faith in them,
like a child’s eyes; as if she relied on him
to straighten out this tangle, to tell her not only
about Miltoun’s trouble, but about all life,
its meaning, and the secret of its happiness:
And he said gently:

“What can I do? Mrs. Noel is in Town.
But that’s no good, unless—­”
Not knowing how to finish this sentence; he was silent.

“I wish I were Miltoun,” she muttered.

At that quaint saying, Courtier was hard put to it
not to take hold of the hands so close to him.
This flash of rebellion in her had quickened all
his blood. But she seemed to have seen what had
passed in him, for her next speech was chilly.

“It’s no good; stupid of me to be worrying
you.”

“It is quite impossible for you to worry me.”

Her eyes lifted suddenly from her glove, and looked
straight into his.

“Are you really going to Persia?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want you to, not yet!”
and turning suddenly, she left him.

Strangely disturbed, Courtier remained motionless,
consulting the grave stare of the group of Georgian
Caradocs.

A voice said:

“Good painting, isn’t it?”

Behind him was Lord Harbinger. And once more
the memory of Lady Casterley’s words; the memory
of the two figures with joined hands on the balcony
above the election crowd; all his latent jealousy of
this handsome young Colossus, his animus against one
whom he could, as it were, smell out to be always
fighting on the winning side; all his consciousness
too of what a lost cause his own was, his doubt whether
he were honourable to look on it as a cause at all,
flared up in Courtier, so that his answer was a stare.
On Harbinger’s face, too, there had come a
look of stubborn violence slowly working up towards
the surface.

“I said: ‘Good, isn’t it?’
Mr. Courtier.”

“I heard you.”

“And you were pleased to answer?”

“Nothing.”

“With the civility which might be expected of
your habits.”

Coldly disdainful, Courtier answered:

“If you want to say that sort of thing, please
choose a place where I can reply to you,” and
turned abruptly on his heel.

But he ground his teeth as he made his way out into
the street.

In Hyde Park the grass was parched and dewless under
a sky whose stars were veiled by the heat and dust
haze. Never had Courtier so bitterly wanted
the sky’s consolation—­the blessed
sense of insignificance in the face of the night’s
dark beauty, which, dwarfing all petty rage and hunger,
made men part of its majesty, exalted them to a sense
of greatness.